Steel day's fun

 We were able to squeeze in one last trip to the American Fork steel day's carnival! Grandma came with us and we met up with the Fountaines for a few rides as well.

 All of the rides that the kids go on were some of the exact same rides I rode on when I was their age. It does scare me a little that they are that old, but luckily the rides are nothing too crazy.

 After the kids rode all the rides they wanted to and ran around and used all our tickets we ended the day with snowcones! A perfect Steel Day's carnival!

Gateway Chalkart Festival

 We were able to hit up the Gateway chalkart festival at the Gateway mall downtown again this year. We met Heather and the kids and Grandma at the fountains first and let the kids run around and play in the water fountains for a while. After the kids had all the water fun they could handle we ran into Barnes and Noble for a little bit. Somehow all of the grand kids talked Grandma into buying them a book. We then walked up and down the main street to check out all of the chalk art. We love looking at all of the different things that people create. The kids always pick their favorites. The kids always love at the very end where they have endless amounts of sidewalk chalk for the kids to color with. Carson made a drawing and a news helicopter came over head while he was drawing. He was convinced that if he waved and got their attention they would put his chalk art on the news.

Zoo adventures

We have LOTS of fun memories at the zoo! I had a friend give us a zoo membership when Carson was about one. She had been gifted it but they were moving away to Arizona. I had only ever been to the Utah zoo one other time before that. But I started taking Carson was he was little and we loved it. Soon after the Ford's bought a membership and we started going with them a lot. We discovered it was about halfway between our house and the Smith's house in Kayesville, so it was a perfect spot for us to meet. We have been to the zoo countless times and for so many fun activities and holidays. We had to squeeze in a few more trips to the zoo before we left. We will always cherish the fun memories we have there running around with Grandma and Grandpa and the cousins!

Carson's zoo favorites: the water park, the train ride and the reptile house (otherwise known as the stink house)
Brynn's favorites: the water park, the Zebra's, and the seal's
McKay's favorites: the carousel (doesn't care much for the animals but loves the carousel)

Fairview Fun!

As soon as school was out we hurry and packed our stuff and were out of here! I wanted to make sure we fit in a good amount of time down in Fairview with Grandma and Grandpa Randall. They will be leaving on their next mission soon and we will be leaving to head to St. Louis.
On the way down we stopped at the Spanish Fork splash park and met our good friends the Cuffs. We lived next to each other in Lehi and have kept in touch since then. Secretly both Lynsey and I have plans of Carson and Ava getting married. They were best of friends and inseparable when we lived by each other. It took them a few minutes to warm back up to each other but by the end they were running around together! It was a fun pit stop and so good to catch up with the Cuff's.

Michelle and her kids also joined us down in Fairview. It was fun to have them down there and sneak in some extra cousin time!

A list of our activities and fun times:
-4 wheeler rides
-Lots and lots of swim time
-a couple of trips to the park (both parks)
-making smores
-riding the zipline
-Grandma's famous pancakes
-deer watching
-eating out on the patio and deck
-popsicles and sherbert
-making cookies with Grandma
-playing tennis
-going golfing with Grandpa
-meeting our friends the Watson's for Shave and Cream Ice cream and catching up with them
As you can see we fit a lot in and there is always a lot of fun. I enjoy taking the week to have everything go at a slower pace and I love being out in the fresh mountain air. I could never live in that small of a town as Fairview, but I love going for trips down there. I hope my kids will have wonderful memories of going down there.

Grandma also wanted to help Brynnley make a pillowcase. She had helped Kate make one a few weeks earlier and knew it would be fun for Brynn to do to. I can remember going out to my Grandma's and making sewing projects with her.
When we went to go get Brynn's fabric at the fabric store the boys found some soccer ball fabric they had to have. So Grandma helped all of them make pillowcases. They had a lot of fun doing it and I think it will be a great way to remember Grandma while she is on her mission.

Silver Surf Soccer

 We had a great season with Utah surf. We decided to give competition soccer a try this year and I think it went really well. We had a lot of fun being part of the team, Carson loved playing his teammates, and he improved a lot this year.
It was a big commitment (time and financially). But I am glad we did it. Carson loved every second of it. He loves soccer and everything about it.

 It was a lot of fun to watch him play. He for sure was more into the games this year and knew where to be and where he needed to play. He also learned more about being aggressive and really getting him self where he needed to be.

 He had a great team this year! We were lucky enough to be coached by Joe Hansen and he did a great job with the boys. We were also lucky enough to have quite a few of Carson's friends on his team. The boys that he didn't know going into the season he was friends with by the end. We loved getting to know the boys better and the parents as well.

 I was lucky enough to be the team manager for the team this year. It was a bigger time commitment than I anticipated but I was happy to do it for the team.
At the end of the season we had an end of season banquet for the families. We went to a park and had pizza and food and the boys ran around and played soccer. We also gave out team medals and a picture of the team to each of the boys. It was a lot of fun and the boys loved getting together.
It was a great season and we are glad we made the great memories with the Utah Silver Surf team!

Last day of school!

 Pic of first and last day of school. Last day of school for this 2nd grader and Kindergartner! Onto 3rd and 1st! Yikes

 Luckily Grandma and Grandpa Ford were home when the kids got home from school. We welcomed them home with silly string and a silly string war!

 The kids and Grandma and Grandpa loved! Happy last day of school! Welcome summer!

A big Announcement!

Big changes ahead for our family! My rock star husband received a promotion at work that is going to take our family to St. Louis. After a very long decision making process we have decided to take the adventure and uproot our family from Utah and move to St. Louis. We are really excited for the good times that lie ahead, but sad to say good bye to our home, our friends and our family!

This is a decision that took us many weeks to decide. Pretty soon after we got back from Disneyland we began exploring the possiblity. We truly went back and forth multiple times about the decision. We decided to go ahead and have Kyle go through with the interview process for the job in St. Louis and see where it took us. He flew through all of the interviews and they loved him and insisted they had to have him as the Manager in St. Louis. The last thing they wanted to do as part of the interview process was to fly both of us out to St. Louis to see what we though. So two days after they told us that we were on a plane on our way to St Louis. We were only in St. Louis for a couple of days but had a chance to drive around and look at some of the area's we had been looking at online, find the church, and visit the children's hopsital. Kyle also went into the office to meet the team and that went very well. We took the plane ride home to make the decision on if we were ready to go ahead and move or not. By the time we had landed back in Utah we had decided to move our family to St. Louis. That of course made me errupt in tears, happy and scared tears all at the same time.
It is going to be a big change for our family. It will be hard to leave ALL our family. But we are hoping to get a few things out of this move for our fmaily. We want to our family to grow closer to each other and to rely on one another. We want our kids to experince life outside fo the Utah bubble. We (mainly, I) want to experience the church outside of Utah as well.
We feel pretty confident that we will eventually end up back in Utah at some point, not sure when that will be but are hopeful we will.
It is going to be so hard to say goodbye to all of our friends and family here. There are so many memories here and things are comfortable here. But we want to challenge ourselves and get out of our comfort zone.  So here is to new adventures ahead!